


the high road

by cosmoscorpse



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fevers, Gen, Low Chaos, and all the fun stuff that comes with them, appearances by miscellaneous cast members
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse
Summary: “I can’t remember what you looked like,” she confesses.Like you, the Heart says gently, like you, only without your strength, and without your father’s eyes.“You were strong,” Emily breathes, remembering the set of her mother’s shoulders, the steel in her spine and the kindness in her words; remembering everything about her mother but her face. The Heart hums.Perhaps, it says, but I shattered like spun glass. You are already stronger than I ever was, and you are not yet done.





	

**Author's Note:**

> guys, _this game_

The blade cuts quick and deep into her side; sticks there. Emily feels her breath clog up her lungs. Sees her arm move more than she feels it – a bystander in her own body. Her knife lodges in the meat of the guard’s shoulder.

Someone screams. The man’s eyes widen – he looks startled,  _surprised_  – and his fingers loosen on the hilt of his sword; the skin of his face goes pale, pale against the blue of his shirt collar. He stumbles back, takes his blade with him, and it scrapes against her ribs on its way out. Leaves a terrible heat pulsing loud where it’d been.

 _Run_ , the Heart says, and so she does.

 

She stops in a condemned apartment near old Batista, by the waterfront. Collapses, really – stumbles on a loose roof tile and falls in through an open skylight. Blood draining out, mixing with the dust on the hardwood floor. The impact rattling her bones. Instinct makes her freeze, go quiet and listening, but there’s no one alive in the building but her. Even the bloodfly nests lie dried and emptied. All the doors and windows sealed up tight.

She closes her eyes, makes an effort to steady her breathing. Does nothing for the pain, which still flares white hot agony in her side with every twitch of her traitor body. She didn’t think it would. What it _does_ do is help her drag her thoughts into something resembling _order_. Neat, pristine. Bloodless.

She’s still bleeding. Can taste iron in the back of her throat.

 _Bind the wound,_ says the Heart.

Emily braces her forearms against the floor, pushes herself up and grits her teeth at the fresh surge of pain. She peels out of her jacket with clumsy fingers and tears cloth from the hem in long strips. Wraps it tight around her ribs. It’s slow going, and her hands shake.

She’s shivering when it’s done, drenched in cold sweat. Her hair is falling out of its knot, and there’s the bitter tang of iron at the back of her throat. She pulls herself up on the kitchen counter, stumbles with a hand braced on the wall down a hallway and into a sitting room. She sees light filtering through the boards on the windows, slanting through the dust.

She’s shivering, and shaking, and cold – but the sunlight is warm against the wall when she steps into it, and so she slides down onto the ground, a hand pressed tight against her side. Her own heartbeat pulses flighty under her palm, like a strange bird caught up in the cage of her chest. She thinks that she will only linger here for a moment or two, and no longer. The other Heart beats quiet and steady, somewhere in the space by her left hand.

Emily tilts her head back, closes her eyes.

When she opens them next she’s still shivering, and the sun is gone.

She’s got blood in the back of her mouth, and the wound’s gone hot under her hand.

 

The building may be abandoned, but the neighborhood isn't. It’s fringe Howler territory just the same as it’s fringe Batista: the Howlers and the dust seem to go hand in unfriendly hand. Already, only two days into her fever, Emily has heard the wind screaming through the seams in the building like a living thing more times than she has cared to count. Thinks it’s a wild beast and wakes from her dozing in fever-bright terror. Faceless men and witches come to put her down.

There are people singing down in the street too, a woman’s mournful croon and a man’s deep voice supporting it. One of them plays the fiddle and Emily can see it behind her twitching eyelids. The singing woman’s hands, the dark amberwood of the instrument. The silverdust in the street around them.

She coughs and it sends vibrant starbursts of pain scattering across her vision. Been flickering in and out anyway, of late. Bursts of gold and purple and void blue. Sounds leaving bright echoes. Her fingers twitch where they rest on the floorboards, and she shivers again. Presses her hands against her bandaged side and whimpers at the sticky damp, the heat.

The woman hits a high note. Emily feels it echoing under her sternum.

 _She and Her Mother used to sing together, until dust from the mines stole Her voice_ , the Heart says in its faraway voice, half lost and half desperate. Emily’s head lists to the side, her hands falling away from her wound. Finds her breath sticking in her chest. The woman and the man sing lullabies, not unlike the ones Meagan hummed when she thought Emily wasn’t listening. Not unlike the ones her father hummed to her a long, long time ago.

_Emily?_

“Yes?” she says in her dust-cracked-broken voice. Closes her eyes.

The Heart is silent.

 

“Mother,” Emily says – breathes really, a note on the wind on the dawn of the third day. The Heart beats gently, and Emily thinks she hears it whisper a response. “I didn’t want to hurt him.”

She is drowning in dust, in her own skin; she is –

 

 _I am proud of you_ , the Heart says.

 

“Get your boots off the table,” Meagan says, knocking gently at her feet with the ladle. Her tone is harsh but she’s got a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth – been kinder and softer since Emily brought back Sokolov. Heat drifts from the galley, the smell of something warm and salty and rich.

The Wale creaks around them, and Emily laughs. Plants her feet firmly on the floor.

“Better?” she asks. Meagan smirks less sideways, nods.

 

She is adrift in the void, whales singing all around her and bright light spearing the darkness and burning in her eyes. Delilah is in the void with her, standing above her shivering corpse and smiling beatifically. Emily is not certain that she is real – she is not certain that Delilah would ever smile like she thinks her mother did. The streets of Karnaca bloom around them, gilded in silver, bright and shining and malformed.

“How strange,” the false Delilah says, her voice echoing strange through the space, “How funny – that you will die in the city where your father was born.”

She crouches, lays a hand on Emily’s cheek the same way she did in the throne room on that first day. Emily recoils from her touch, reeling, her body splitting apart in the light.

“I won’t die here,” she rasps, her voice wrecked and hoarse. The shade’s smile stretches wider, and splits her face. Bloodflies swarm from the empty cavern of her jaw.

“You will,” she says.

 

“Tell me a story,” she asks. Whispers, really. Voice like Karnaca’s hot winds over salt-crusted sea stones. Her eyes tracing the outlines of the cracks in the plaster of the ceilings, spidering lines mapping out from the seams of the room. Dust swirls in the corner, stirred by her breath. Shadows flicker in the corners of her eyes and the Mark throbs on the back of her hand.

 _What sort do you wish to hear?_  the Heart beats, slow and unfrantic. Emily turns her face to it, seeking warmth, comfort. That which she will not get from the chained spirit of her dead mother, but desires regardless. Shadows flicker, dancing along the walls. Dark fire, licking at her skin. The wound is hot on her side, dries her out her tongue and makes her slow.

“Anything,” she whispers. Thinks she can glimpse a woman’s shape made of shade and starlight at the periphery of her vision. Her hands rise up and settle cool on Emily’s face. She turns herself to it, clumsy and slow. She wishes that she could see her face – that she could remember her mother as anything but a fragmented collaboration of old oil paintings and _Delilah’s_ harsh eyes.

 _You are burning,_ the Heart says, low and somber _, here is a story that is perhaps familiar:_ _a Man you know was born not far from here. He ran through these streets and was untamed and He threw stones at bloodfly nests and he laughed when they buzzed. Did he ever tell you of it? a Girl you will never know was born here too, and ran with him, faster and farther still._

_They never settled, children of quick-wit and sharp-tongue and wandering-feet. a Woman you will never know waited behind their paths and held the Strictures to her heart and she would have been proud to know you. Did he ever tell you of it?_

The Heart gasps then, or the closest thing to it: a sharp sound, like what the rush intake of air would be in the language of a creature only remembering it. The Heart says again, _You are burning_.

“I am burning,” Emily agrees, reaching through the fog and starlight for the hands of her mother’s spirit. Feeling more dust than Empress, more fever than girl. She can see the fire licking at the shell of her skin, and wonders if her bones make for good kindling. What anyone could do with the ash.

 

The whales are singing to each other in the deep of the seas.

Long and mournful; high and finite; the echoing of it fills the void. Slips down into the empty cavity of her chest and makes a new heart for her. An organ that sings sweeter than her ruined voice could ever manage – something pure and incorruptible.

 

“Get your boots off the table,” Meagan says, knocking gently at her feet with the ladle. Emily laughs and smiles so wide it splits her face. Sparks falling down into her lap. Meagan turns back to the galley, humming quietly.

“I am burning,” Emily says. Meagan nods.

 

The Heart, the stardust shadow woman, her _mother_ slinks across the walls, pulling secrets from the bricks. Comes back to Emily’s side and lays her coldwater hands on Emily’s face, her shoulders, her neck. Pulls the fire out like threads on an unfinished hem – it only flares back stronger, hotter, and the Heart sings a cradlesong tune and keeps working.

“I can’t remember what you looked like,” she confesses, glowing coals falling out of her mouth like uncut gemstones. Turns her blind eyes to the window. The woman is still singing down in the street – her mother’s shade is still singing in the space above and behind her right shoulder. Glowing coals rattle in her chest when she breathes.

 _Like you_ , the shade says softly, gently, pulling at the threads, _like you, only without your strength and without your father’s eyes_.

“You were strong,” Emily breathes, remembering the set of her mother’s shoulders, the steel in her spine and the kindness in her words; remembering everything about her mother but her _face_. The Heart hums, and the shade bends double, brushing Emily’s hair back behind her ear.

 _Perhaps_ , it says, _but I shattered like spun glass. You are already stronger than I ever was, and you are not yet done._

 

The whales are singing to each other in the deep of the void. She can hear the resonant song rattling in her jaw, between the little bones of her ears. Her eyes are full of distant fire and she imagines that she is more skin than bone, more ash than blood, and less still than even that. The stone of the island is solid at her back, but she is so far gone that she cannot even feel the chill.

She breathes out sparks and bleeds out coals and heat. Is scoured clean and raw in the inferno. She thinks it would be nice for the cold of the void to sink into what is left of her corpse. To bury herself in it and be lost. She keeps her eyes fixed on the distant stars.

“Emily Kaldwin.”

She turns her head, creaking like an old machine. A fine and fair clockwork, ruined by her own hand. Bits of herself breaking apart and drifting; burning, always burning. The Outsider is crouched near her, his eyes dark in his bonepale face, something halfway between curiosity and concern writ in the slant of his mouth. She forces the tattered remains of her lips into a smile.

“You,” she rasps, pushing air through shredded lungs. She does not worry that her embers and sparks will catch him on fire – he is far too drowned and damp for that. She reaches for him and he leans forward, black eyes hungry. “What happens to the Empire, when I die here?”

He shakes his head.

“You won’t die here,” he says, and he does not sound at all like a god – only like a boy.

Emily laughs.

 

 _I am proud of you_ , the Heart says, _I am so proud of you, but you are not finished yet._

Emily can hear the ocean through the shuttered windows. Birds calling. She cannot open her eyes.

Her mother sings to her, combing fingers through her hair.

 _What I wouldn’t give to hold you just one time more_ , she sighs, _Emily. It’s time to wake up._

 

“You won’t die here,” the Outsider says, and pours seawater down her throat.

 

“Here,” a voice sighs, low and rasping, “Careful, she’s resting. That board right there creaks – step over it.”

A quiet murmur, indecipherable; then closer: “-how is she?”

The second voice is warm like good whiskey. Emily sinks into the familiar sound of it, comfortable in the dark. The first speaker grunts, scuffs a boot along the floor.

“She had a fever when my boys first found her, and we had to stitch up a pretty nasty cut on her flank, but,” another vague noise, the air shifting near her face, “She should be past the worst of it.”

The second voice sighs, a long and slow exhale. “Thanks, Blanchard,” they say, and Emily hears the soft jingle of coins in a purse, “What do I owe you?”

The first voice laughs, says, “Come downstairs for a drink and we’ll call it even. We’ll help you get her back to your boat in the morning.”

The two of them go back down the stairs together and shut the door quietly behind.

She drifts back down into the dark.

 

In the dim of the room above the Crone’s Hand Saloon in old Batista she reaches out for the Heart.

It beats on, steady against her fingertips, and is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> ive got lots of feelings about emily and the heart. come cry with me at [seaborgois](http://seaborgois.tumblr.com) on tumblr

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The High Road](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15402360) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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